The Taxpayers contribute about 80% of the money to fund the Police and Fire Pension system.  That’s right 80%!  Police and Fire participants in the pension plan ONLY CONTRIBUTE 10%.  The remainder comes from insurance premiums.

In spite of all this, Taxpayers only have a 40% say in how the Police and Fire Pension Fund is managed.  Of the five members who oversee  Police and Fire Pension Fund (PFPF), only two are appointed by City Council on behalf of the Taxpayer.  The  PFPF is poorly managed.  Administrative costs are high and the funds under perform relative to similar pension funds.

It is no coincidence that the PFPF fights every attempt at transparency as they collect high salaries and enjoy lucrative benefits.

At the very least, Taxpayers deserve to have a proportional representation on the PFPF board of trustees.  To that end, the Concerned Taxpayers of Duval County has adopted the following resolution.

Resolution adopted by Concerned Taxpayers of Duval Co. on January 9, 2012

To the Mayor and City Council ofJacksonvilleFL:

WHEREAS, the City of Jacksonville (“City”) provides about 80% of the funds that are contributed from all sources to the Jacksonville Police & Fire Pension Fund (“PFPF”), and this percentage is projected to increase; and

WHEREAS, the employees participating in the PFPF provide about 10% of the funds that are contributed from all sources to the PFPF, and this percentage is likely to decrease; and

WHEREAS, the remaining contributions to the PFPF principally come from premium taxes collected by the State respecting Duval County properties, and this percentage is also likely to decrease; and

WHEREAS, the PFPF is administered by a 5 member board of trustees, which invests assets, incurs liabilities, hires staff, and makes various expenditures, which in recent years have exceeded $7 million per year, exclusive of benefit payments; and

WHEREAS, employees participating in (benefiting from) the PFPF elect 2 of the trustees of the PFPF, while the City Council, on behalf of the City, appoints 2 of the trustees of the PFPF; and

WHEREAS, those 4 trustees of the PFPF choose a 5th trustee, who the City Council must by law appoint (ratify) as a ministerial matter; and

WHEREAS, the City thus directly appoints only 2 out of 5 trustees of the PFPF, and thereby lacks the power to control the operations of the PFPF; and

WHEREAS, the City needs to have, and deserves to have, the chance to exercise control over PFPF operations, because the City provides 80% of all contributions to the PFPF, and thus all decisions by the PFPF trustees principally affect the City and its taxpayers; and

WHEREAS, State legislation adopted in 2011 empowers the City to modify local law to directly appoint 3 of 5 PFPF trustees (see Curtis Lee’s letter to City Council et al dated Dec. 7, 2011); and

WHEREAS, such a change is not only fair, but proper because the PFPF has very high operating costs, substantial waste and abuse, and poor investment results; i.e., it has a poor track record;

WHEREAS, all existing PFPF trustees and executives have served at least 5 years, and many have served more than 20 years, with the result being that all such incumbents are implicated in the waste, abuse and poor financial results that afflict the PFPF; and

WHEREAS, a failure by the City to take advantage of the opportunity presented by the 2011 State legislation will result in continued harm to City taxpayers, because the PFPF has a poor track record, and is very costly to taxpayers – the PFPF costs the City and its taxpayers over 8% of the City’s General Fund Budget currently, and such percentage is projected to increase;

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that the City Council and administration should obtain legal opinions and take all necessary action to effectuate such changes in local law, and then should appoint 3 new trustees of the PFPF, with the objective of replacing current management of the PFPF, reducing costs, waste and abuse, and reforming the PFPF.

The City Council Auditor has recently released the results of their audit of the Jacksonville Economic Development Commission.

The audit reinforces what we have been saying all along.  The promises made by the advocates of corporate welfare in the form of the Jacksonville Economic Development Commission are often not delivered.  With over a decade long track record of corporate giveaways, handouts and bailouts, taxpayers have little to nothing to show for millions of dollars that have been “invested” .

We applaud the new mayoral administration’s proposed elimination of the JEDC but are skeptical of the dubious effort to re-brand corporate welfare as “public private partnerships” or P3s or PPPs.  Unfortunately the P3s being touted bear no resemblance to the Navy aircraft flying over the city.  Instead, P3s are just another euphemism for corporate welfare schemes where taxpayers bear all the risk of capital financing for a project and private individuals benefit when there (rarely) is a profit.

Now Mayor Brown has promised to reform the concept and focus on Downtown.   Haven’t we heard the broken promises before? Lavilla Redevelopment?  ? Lavilla BistroRiver City Renaissance?  Courthouse?  Genovar Hall?  Shipyards?  Skyway People Mover? Our own John Winkler has performed his own investigation to summarize the just a few of the failed promises of the sages at city hall.  The investigation is featured on our November show.

We do not doubt the sincerity of those who would like to see the urban core thrive.  In fact, we would like to see downtown turn into a prosperous area where people actually enjoy going.   Unfortunately, taxpayers can not afford to lose any more money on risky giveaways disguised as “investments” for some unquantifiable and intangible public good.

We urge Mayor Brown to reconsider the public dollar giveaway to the aspiring robber barons camouflaged as philanthropists.

Paid political advertisement paid for by the Concerned Taxpayers of Duval County, Inc., PO Box 2307, Jacksonville, FL 32202, independently Read the full story

This is the 4/2/2011 candidate committees interview of Michael Corrigan, candidate for tax collector Jacksonville, Florida. For more information, please Read the full story

This is the Concerned Taxpayers of Duval County Candidate Committee Interview of Mike Hogan, candidate for mayor in Jacksonville 2011. Read the full story

A fee does the city no good if it doesn’t get paid. That is the issue with the stormwater and garbage fees. According to the Florida Times Union, 17% of the stormwater and garbage fees have not been paid to the city even though it appears to be more like 30% lately.  The city would like to reduce this statistic to 5% by adding the fees to your property tax bill.  When that happens, failure to pay the fees could get a lien placed on your property.   With this motivational trick, the mayor is hoping to persuade Jacksonville residents to pay the unpopular fees.

The up side of putting the fees on the property tax bill is cost savings.  The cost savings projected by the Central Operations department is about $737,000 per year. In a tough budget year, that is not exactly chump change.  Billing customers is a major expense for businesses which explains why so many businesses like e-mailed billing notices and automatic debits which reduce this cost.

On the other hand, the down side is that the fees become more entrenched as they become easier to collect.  Many of us were not happy with the fees mainly because they rolled back the property tax relief provided to us by the Florida Legislature in 2007 and which we taxpayers approved in 2008.  Personally and I speak only for myself and not for Concerned Taxpayers, I have no problems with the fees in and of themselves and I actually like the idea of diversifying the city’s revenue base.

However, my problem with the fees is that the political establishment in Jacksonville was not willing to give up its obsession with spending other people’s money even when the Jacksonville taxpayer was clearly being overtaxed.  Sometimes, the money is spent on indispensable services like police and fire suppression.  Other times, it is spent on government charity and corporate welfare which I believe the taxpayer should not be forced to fund.  Until Jacksonville city government restricts its responsibilities to the core functions of government (police, fire suppression, parks, etc) and not whatever pet project some City Council member or Mayor fancies at the moment, I will reject any tax increase that makes hard earned taxpayer money available to politicians to play with.  That is especially true in hard times when a failure to pay the fees could lead to the loss of your home.

Last Tuesday (July 28), the Jacksonville City Council voted on the proposed millage rate for the 2009/2010 city budget. Here is how they voted.

The following City Council members voted to lower your taxes by keeping the millage rate as it currently is, specifically 8.48 mills.

Bill Bishop, Richard Clark, John Crescimbeni, Daniel Davis, Johnny Gaffney, Art Graham, Ray Holt, Glorious Johnson, Denise Lee, Clay Yarborough

The following City Council members voted to raise your taxes by 12 percent as proposed by Mayor Peyton.

Reggie Brown, Michael Corrigan, Ronnie Fussell, Kevin Hyde, Warren Jones, Stephen Joost, Don Redman, Art Shad, Jack Webb

Two years ago, the Peyton administration and Jacksonville City Council decided that we Duval County taxpayers did not deserve the property tax relief promised to us by the Florida Legislature and imposed three new taxes on us. Now, the stormwater and garbage tax bill has hit us for the second time. This bill is twice as large as the last one.

Please join us in our effort to repeal these new taxes before it is too late.

On June 9th at 4 PM, let’s gather outside of City Hall prior to the City Council meeting and call for the repeal of these taxes!

Once the City Council meeting starts, you can tell City Council that the fees need to go during the public comment portion of the meeting. We need as many people to show up as possible. If we do not stop this tax now, it will become more difficult to remove in the future and will become a burden for generations to come in Jacksonville!

We seek nothing less than the immediate and permanent repeal of the ordinances authorizing the new fees:

So you want to know how to justify putting the taxpayer on the hook for $200,000 ($125,000 loan and $75,000 grant) to a business to expand its truck washing facilities?  Tell everyone that it reduces crime!

Yes, it’s true!  According to the City Council analysis of bill 2009-185, more than half of the 18 new full time jobs created by this expansion will be available to assist the re-entry of felons back into society.  Jacksonville businesses apparently have caught on to the fact that if you want to get money from the city government, it helps to have a crime prevention angle going for you.  It is not only absurd to use economic development money to do crime reduction, but also expensive since we are spending over $11,000 per job.

According to a recent poll, only 33% of Jacksonville residents think that Jacksonville is heading in the right direction.  Less than half (48%) think that Mayor John Peyton is doing a good job and even less (35%) think that the City Council is doing any better.   Compare these numbers with 71% for Peyton and 54% for the City Council nearly two years ago.  For Jacksonville politicians, this is not a good way to start the day!

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